The semiconductor integrated circuit (“IC”) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing have been needed. For example, an IC is formed by creating one or more devices (e.g., circuit components) on a substrate using a fabrication process. As the geometry of such devices is reduced to the submicron or deep submicron level the IC's active device density (i.e., the number of devices per IC area) and functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per IC area) has become limited by the fabrication process.
Furthermore, as the IC industry has matured, the various operations needed to manufacture an IC may be performed at different locations by a single company or by different companies that specialize in a particular area. This further increases the complexity of producing ICs, as companies and their customers may be separated not only geographically, but also by time zones, making effective communication more difficult. For example, a first company (e.g., an IC design house) may design a new IC, a second company (e.g., an IC foundry) may provide the processing facilities used to fabricate the design, and a third company may assemble and test the fabricated IC. A fourth company may handle the overall manufacturing of the IC, including coordination of the design, processing, assembly, and testing operations.
For manufacturer's of IC's, efficiently providing information (e.g., ship date) associated with the IC manufacturing process to customers is important. In a complex IC manufacturing environment, such as described above, collecting and transmitting of production information involves collecting information from various entities performing the various operations needed to produce an IC.
With previous techniques, IC manufacturers rely more on humans for manual collection and distribution of IC manufacturing information. However, such techniques are less efficient and more likely to be erroneous. Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system without the disadvantages described above.